


Break

by Go0se



Series: Spaces She Leaves [1]
Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alex-centric, Blood, Character Death, Early in Canon, Gen, Ill Use of Lawn Ornaments, Timeline What Timeline, Vomiting, off-screen violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 20:59:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim and Brian are gone, but it has to be all of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break

**Author's Note:**

> Still not sure the story’s really what I want it to be, but I’ve also been staring at it for a while now and it hasn’t gotten any better, so I figured I’d release it into the wild. You’re welcome (maybe).
> 
> ~~**~~

-  
  
Tim and Brian are gone, but it has to be all of them.

The others followed him willingly, showed him what they thought he was looking for. Sarah will be more complicated: she’ll have been warned all her life about following strange men like him anywhere. Any attempts to ask her to shoot some scenes out in the woods will be rejected. Sarah will not meet him at his house.  
Sarah will feel secure in her own house, and in the small cracked driveway outside it. She will leave the side door unlocked while carrying groceries in from her car.

Alex is not the one who thinks these things. He is _not._  
But he is the one in front of Sarah’s house now. He can’t remember how he knew where it was or how he got there. Static is eating his brain. A heavy ornamental stone in the shape of a frog sits beside the dusty front step, so he grabs it, and—  
when he pushes on the side door it opens without a creak, and-  
his head hurts so badly it feels like it’s caving in, and—

And then Sarah is _gone._ Alex is left, standing in her narrow kitchen, alone, his own harsh breathing the only sound in the house.  There’s puddles and smears and drops of blood all over Sarah’s kitchen’s floor. It’s spreading under his feet; there’s patches soaked onto the knee of his jeans.  
  
Alex drops the stone frog and stumbles back, hoping his shoes don’t slide out from under him. His eyes burn. His head is still aching, and he wishes it ached more, obliterated his thoughts, because he doesn’t want to be thinking.   
There’s things he must have done, horrible things, evidence is all around him— the blood— but there’s no camera here, and he can’t remember. Anything.   
His stomach wrenches.  
  
An open trash basket is near him, tucked into the corner between the last of the cupboards and the little dividing wall between Sarah’s kitchen and the rest of the bungalow. He manages to hack up the insides of his throat into the basket instead of onto the floor, but it’s a close thing.  
There’s blood in his mouth. His head is spinning and he’s bent half-over, one hand around his stomach and the other clutched onto the corner of the counter.  
Trying to stand up is a bad idea; Alex only slips on the red under his shoes. His knees make a dull crack when they hit the linoleum. He barely catches himself before the side of his head meets the corner of the counter.  
His hands are shaking like he’s freezing, but he wipes across his mouth anyway, scrubs at his eyes. He stays slumped against the corner of Sarah’s cupboards, trying to breathe.  
  
Then he gets up.

Alex does not want to do any of this. He didn’t _plan_ any of it. He never would.  But Sarah’s street isn’t abandoned like the hospital on the tapes was. Sarah has neighbours, she has friends. They’ll come check up on her eventually, for whatever reason, they will, but she won’t be here, and if he just leaves the mess everywhere now they’ll _know._ Alex can’t let anyone know.

So he grabs a mop and bucket from beside Sarah’s fridge; takes a bottle of liquid dish soap that sits, still in a grocery bag, in front of the sink. His paranoia kicks in and he grabs a bottle of bleach from the bag, too.  
It takes almost half an hour to clean up the blood. (God, there had never been blood before, had there? There shouldn’t be so much _blood_ ). Fumes burn his eyes and the inside of his nose.

When the floor’s finally clean he makes sure to put the soap and bleach back where he found them. Then he takes care of the rest of it: unwinds the stained mop head from its handle and drops it in the garbage on top of his stale vomit, picks up the stone frog (that’s smeared red now) and tosses it in too. He ties the bag shut and takes it outside to the trash bin that’s standing at the end of Sarah’s driveway, making sure his sleeve is completely pulled over his hand when he opens and closes the side door. He would lock it behind him too, but he can’t. Sarah’s keys went with her.  
  
His phone buzzes in his pocket, making him flinch and drop the trash can’s lid. After a feverish check up and down the street (empty—- it’s too hot to be outside, practically wildfire weather) he takes it out. He has to squint to see the screen.  
A bubble filled with cheerful text tells him that Jay had called twenty minutes ago. Alex doesn’t remember ever hearing it ring.  
His head aches.  
There’s a little emoticon of a happy face talking into a phone beside the message. Fingers numb, he types in his voicemail password. Alex listens to the message that his friend left, the static in his head getting louder and louder.  
  
It has to be all of them.  
  
When Jay signs off with a awkward “I guess I’ll see you later”, Alex deletes the message and then stuffs his phone in his pocket. He’s not surprised, when he looks up, to see that he’s back in his own neighbourhood again.  
Alex clears his throat and then spits on the ground by his feet. It comes up coppery-tasting and dark. There’s similarly dark stains on his knees, and little dark flecks on his arm. He can’t remember how they got there. But none of those things matter.  
He looks up at the clouds gathering in the sky, wipes his face. Then he turns and starts to head toward his home. Jay will be there to meet him soon.

  
\---


End file.
